Nov. 10 - After more than a decade since his first fiction, "Bonfire of the Vanities,'' Tom Wolfe's much anticipated second novel, "A Man in Full,'' has landed in bookstores with much fanfare and lofty expectations. It's the literary event of the year.

Wolfe's massive (742 pages) take on America in the '90s has been excerpted in Rolling Stone and Men's Journal magazines, and has already been named a finalist for the 1998 National Book Award.

The publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, expects the book to be a megaseller and has printed 1.2 million copies.

It's probably right, judging by advance sales on the book-selling Web sites. As of Oct. 30, "A Man in Full'' was No.2 in sales at amazon.com ( "Midwives,'' by Chris Bohjalian, Oprah Winfrey's latest book club selection, was No.1.)

Does "A Man in Full'' live up to its hype? Is it truly the second coming of Tom Wolfe, novelist? The answer to both questions is yes - mostly. If you liked "Bonfire,'' the chances are good that you'll like "A Man in Full.'' It's got the same dark wit and charm. In some places it's laugh-out-loud funny. The author's commitment to journalism in fiction is just as noticeable; that Wolfe did his homework is apparent in the details and descriptive passages.

The story centers on Charlie Croker, a former cracker football hero who turned the Atlanta real-estate boom of the '80s into a personal fortune. His holdings include the huge quail-shooting plantation named Turpmtine, a wholesale food business called Croker Global and a white elephant of an office tower in suburban Atlanta that he had the temerity to name after himself.

As the story unfolds, Charlie gets into financial trouble when he can't lease space in the office tower and therefore can't repay bank loans, and, in the funniest and cleverest scene of the book, the bank holds what it calls a "workout,'' in which bank officials, in a face-to-face meeting, let Charlie know how they're going to get their money back. They also let him know just how they feel about him.

Charlie's financial difficulties and how they affect him and those around him are what drive the tale, but there is much more, including an alleged rape by a black football star of the daughter of one of white Atlanta's power-elite families, the story of a young man who works in one of Charlie's wholesale grocery warehouses on the West Coast, and the give-and-take of behind-the-scenes Atlanta politics.

As Wolfe carefully and deftly weaves the lives of such disparate characters together, he also comments on the world we live in, often with a trenchant wit. He takes the Brahms and Beethoven of an Atlanta symphony concert and juxtaposes that with the wailings of an amateur rap artist in a cesspool of a jail near Oakland. He takes us on a grand tour of Croker's mansion, the insect-infested hills of southern Georgia and the squalor of an Asian flop house.

He makes them all believable; that's the journalist in Wolfe.

The novel is not without its flaws. The story would have been better if Wolfe had included at least one strong woman character. Instead, all the women are peripheral to the plot and most come across as either goldbrickers or whiners, or both.

Also, it becomes increasingly annoying that Wolfe feels he has to translate dialect, whether it's redneck, jive or jailhouse patois.

Also, there is one fairly lengthy passage that just doesn't ring true. To make a point, the mayor of Atlanta, Wes Jordan, decides to show an old college buddy around Atlanta, from the rich side to the downtown to the poor side of the tracks.

The problem with this protracted scene is that both characters supposedly grew up within blocks of each other, attended the same college in Atlanta and then lived there for their professional lives. Why would the mayor need to show him his own neighborhood?

And then there's the ending. It's a bit of a letdown, at once too pat and, at the same time, too outrageous.

While comparisons to "Bonfire'' are natural, this is not the same book. With "A Man in Full,'' Wolfe takes the reader on a longer, more encompassing ride through Americana. Where "Bonfire'' was mostly a New York novel, "A Man in Full'' rockets back and forth between higher-echelon Atlanta and the mean streets of Oakland, which are light years, rather than a continent, apart.

There are similarities, though. Both books center on a racial incident allowing Wolfe to discuss this country's great divide, but "A Man in Full,'' for the most part, is subtler in that regard. And while Charlie Croker seems the antithesis of Sherman, the Brahmin lead character in "Bonfire,'' in many important ways they are the same. Both have visions of themselves that are much grander than those around them. And, for both of them, their egos and delusions lead to their downfalls.

Overall, with "A Man in Full,'' Wolfe has created an absorbing and provocative novel and has done nothing to diminish his selfperceived calling as a social critic and member of the literati. His star shines on.

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